Clovis woman receives suspended sentence in abuse case

CLOVIS — A Clovis woman received a three-year suspended sentence Wednesday morning for a charge of abuse following her son’s 2015 death.

A jury trial for Rocio Montanez, 29, went for two days before a plea deal was struck. Under the deal, Montanez pleaded to one count of child abuse not resulting in great bodily harm.

Montanez was initially indicted by a Curry County grand jury in May 2015 on charges of child abuse resulting in great bodily harm of a child following the death of her 18-month-old son, Noah Trujillo, at Plains Regional Medical Center from cardiac arrest. According to court documents, Montanez brought her son to the hospital when she discovered him not breathing, and he was declared dead shortly after arrival. The hospital asked law enforcement to investigate due to numerous injuries discovered on the child.

The case has had numerous delays since, including substitution of defense counsel. A week before trial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Brian Stover said, a pathologist scheduled to testify on the state’s behalf moved across the country and refused to return for trial. Stover said given the numerous delays the trial already had, another continuance was not a reasonable request.

“The evidence is that the child died of a heart attack,” Stover said. “It was hotly disputed between the defense and the state as to what caused the heart attack.”

The defense contended Noah’s heart attack was caused by congenital conditions. Defense counsel Gary Mitchell said the heart condition was rare, but not as rare as what the state argued — the stress of repeated abuse by Christopher Waltrip that Montanez didn’t adequately act to stop.

“Without our pathologist to show the cause of death,” Stover said, “the state was not able to prove that, so we were able to reach a compromise on the outcome.”

Waltrip pleaded no contest to four charges of child abuse not resulting in death or great bodily harm in February 2018. According to court records, he was sentenced to 16 years in prison — three years, plus a one-year enhancement due to a prior felony conviction for each — followed by two years of parole.

Mitchell thought it was fair for Montanez to receive a deferred sentence given the circumstances and that she had nothing on her criminal record before that point.

“I thought it was a fair way to work the case out," Mitchell said. "She never hurt her child, she wasn’t present when he got hurt. But she’s a mom, and in this day and age, if your child gets hurt, you’ve got a responsibility to take them to the doctor.”